Care to go for a test drive?

I finally ran into cute glasses guy again. But not in the building, in the auto-ecole (driving school)! I was signing up for the lessons, and he came in, he was part of a gourp of students taking some of the practice code exams. We made eye contact, and I smiled and said bonjour. He said nothing and looked at me like I was from the recently demoted to dwarf planet status Pluto. Sigh. Guess he doesn't recognize neighbors outside of the elevator.

je parle bien français

It is driving me nuts that after 5 months, not one of my co-workers has remarked on my progress (I’m assuming there’s at least some!) in French. I’m far from where I’ve like to be, but I do feel like I’ve improved, and it would be nice if someone would say, no matter how casusally, “oh, your French is getting better”. C’mon people, I need validation!
So I love it whenever someone outside of work remarks that I speak French well. “oh, merci” I say, though inside half of me is thinking “I suck, I don’t speak nearly as well as I’d like” yet the other half says “yes, yes, a Frenchie thinks I speak French well!” (Btw - that half of the reaction is only with fluent French speakers - if a non-French speaker says it, it doesn’t matter, you could know only 30 words and they’d think you were fluent).
However, after tonight, I don’t think I can trust French speakers either.

I attended for the first time a French/English conversation group that I had read about in some of the ex-pat manuals I had. I was afraid it’d be mostly American ex-pats barely able to speak, but my main motivation was to meet people, even more so than speak French. But there was only one other American there, and older retired man, the 5 others were French! It was half in English, half in French, so I actually got to speak a decent amount. The other American, he had lived in Paris a little over a year, he moved there with his wife after retirement. And though he could speak in simple sentences, express simple ideas, his French just wasn’t that good. Yet the other kept telling him “you speak really now”, etc. I guess he’s come a long way since moving there and speaking nothing at first, he's mproved a lot. But in the big picture his French was pretty awful. Many of the Frenchies remarked how good mine was as well, but what does that mean after saying the same thing about his??? Argh.

I think I will keep going though, the people seemed nice, and hey, it’s something to do. But come October, I will not be lacking in anything to do!! After being here 5 months, I can no longer claim I’m busy settling in. It’s time to get out of the house and meet people! I just signed up for tennis lessons, those start in October. I’ve taken lessons before, I have a racket, but I’m simply terrible at it. My forehand almost always goes out of the court, that’s if I don’t miss. And my backhand is only slightly better, though if I don’t miss, it goes into the net. Yet, I enjoy it. I’d like to get better at it.
I also have German classes starting in October! I found an institute that has all sorts of courses for adults, very cheap. It’ll be a bit confusing, learning German while trying to perfect my French, and learning it through French, rather than it’s closer cousin, English. But that’ll be half the fun!!

So add tennis and German to the driving lessons and driving courses on the la code I’ll have to take and I’ll be a very little busy bee indeed.

Prague pics 2

Top 2 are examples of typical architecture.
Bottom left is Charles Bridge from castle cathedral tower.
Bottom right is Chalres Bridge - not so postcard perfect with hordes of tourists at daytime.

Prague pics 1

The first is ubiquitous Pilsner beer sign.
2nd photo is giant metronome where Stalin statue used to be.
3rd - Prague Castle
4th is tram - as a public transportation lover, I of course took the tram and metro - very efficient. Yet I still exhausted myself with tons of walking!

Prague trip

I’ve wanted to visit Prague since seeing Mission Impossible I. No, not because I liked the movie, though I did, but because it was filmed there and it just looked so gorgeous. And everything I read or saw about it since then confirmed that.
So I went, expecting it to take my breath away with its beauty. It didn’t. Too high expectations? Probably. Spoiled from living in Paris? Quite likely. However, once I got over the fact that it is not going to look like what it does in postcards and other photos - usually taken at dawn or sunset, with no people in the picture - you’ve all seen a picture of Charles Bridge, even if you don’t know you have - I began to see that yes, it does have beauty.

I arrived there Friday night, and discovered that though I had booked a single, I was placed in a roomy triple (still charged for a single). No complaints there, but then neither the TV nor the hair dryer worked, not that I needed either. And I then realized the half-full shampoo bottles and scribbled on pieces of paper from the former client were still there - nothing major, but wouldn’t they have cleaned that up?

Saturday morning I was up and at ‘em before 8am, eager to start my discovery of Prague. I had the buffet breakfast in the dining room. While offering a wide variety of hot and cold foods, it just simply wasn’t that good. The pastries tasted stale, even though not hard at all, the eggs were cold, the sausage was a bit blah, the oj was watery, etc. Oh well. It was included in the price and I still ate enough to fill me up. The décor, like the food, was rather bland and uninspiring, a rather 70’s or 80’s Communist décor.

After breakfast, I walked to Prague Castle (photo in other post). It was a nice walk to the castle, maybe about 30 min if you walked briskly with no detours. But I took my time, I had to walk through a park to get there, a very pleasant park on a bluff overlooking the Vltata River and the Old Town (center of Prague). The park also had a huge metronome where a giant statue of Stalin used to be - the largest in the world. What the point of the Metronome is I’m not quite sure, something to do with symbolizing the passing of time.

From the park I walked down, only to eventually, to reach the castle, have to go back uphill. Something I didn’t realize before- Prague is HILLY. I climbed so many inclines and stairs and hills - I never even touched the running gear I brought with me! The castle is in a complex that includes a cathedral (the most noticeable part of the castle), gardens, museums, the castle buildings themselves. I climbed the tower (more stairs!) in the cathedral, which gave a fantastic view of the city. One part of the complex is called Golden Lane, which is a narrow little street with small houses in different colors. I went because it was included in my ticket price (I got a ticket that included the cathedral and a few other things), otherwise you’d have to pay. Um, I don’t see why anyone would want to, or should have to, pay to visit it. All it is is some shops and some cafes. Probably all overpriced. It’s cute, yes, very lovely, but you can see streets like that in cities and towns all over Europe!!

After my castle visit, I strolled around in the nearby Malá Strana district, and had lunch in a Mexican restaurant. Don’t laugh, I’ve been craving Mexican for quite a while in Paris, and was so happy to see a menu with chicken enchiladas!! Afterwards, I didn’t visit any sites per se, other than ones I happened to bump into, but wandered for hours. I got back to my hotel (and took the metro and tram, very exciting) about 3:30 and conked out for the next 3 hours.

That evening I did a guided tour pub crawl - the city map the hotel gave me was actually an advertisement for a walking tour company, of which one tour was a 3 hour pub crawl and the price included drinks and a Czech dinner. It was a lot of fun - the group included 3 couples - Italien, Scottish, and Norwegian - 2 Brazilian friends, a Dutch guy, an Australian guy, a woman from the Virgin Islands, a guy from Seattle, and another American who had just chucked his engineering job - at the same firm where my brother works, but a different city - to go teach English in Prague. We went to 3 different pubs, and tried a different Czech beer at each one. After the official tour was over, some people went their own way, and the rest of us continued our educational tour of Czech beers. :) Everyone could speak English - I am just so impressed!!! Not just that they can speak it, but they can understand it well and take part easily in conversations - I’m still struggling with that in French sometimes!! Why is that??? Is there some language learning gene that Americans lack???

The next morning, due to the late night out, I missed the Commie breakfast. No worries, at the beginning of my wandering, I found a French boulangerie where I had coffee and a croissant and read Le Monde. For heaven’s sake, I don’t even do that in France (I read the more easily-digestible and tabloid-like Le Parisian). :) That day my wandering took me to a photo exhibit by the foot of the Charles Bridge - Prague’s famous medieval bridge - and into the Old Town and New Town areas, to the Dvorák museum, some shopping, etc. This was when I began to see that yes Prague was beautiful after all. So many buildings are baroque or art nouveau style (examples in pics). Lots of ornate designs, balconies, etc.

Once again, when back in my hotel room I took a nap. For dinner I went to a nearby French crêperie - yes I know! Why have French food in Prague when I live in France? But I love crepes so much, and I just wasn’t up to heavy Czech food. In the crêperie I saw something very unusual - a good looking Czech guy! Gorgeous even! Unfortunately he was with an unattractive Czech woman, and they seemed to be quite in love. When she went to the restroom, we chatted a bit, he asked where I was from, and even apologized for his bad English. Which was not only a thousand times better than any American’s Czech but also a thousand times better than your typical American’s Spanish or French after studying the language for years.

In general, Czechs are not a good-looking people. Must be something to do with the years under harsh Communist rule. I saw more than just a few women sporting a mullet. Hmm, maybe I should move to Prague. I’d be like a super model.

Monday, my last day, I again had the Commie breakfast. Afterwards I decided to visit Petrin Park, which like the castle and the park near my hotel, is on a hill. There’s a mini Eiffel Tower viewing tower (left over from an Exhibition fair) and a few other sights. However this hill has a funicular. Which turned out to be closed for repairs. CLOSED. So once again, I had to walk and walk and walk uphill. It was a lovely wooden park, but after 2 solid days of tramping around, I was hurtin’. And I’m in good shape! But still, the soles of my feet burned, my knees hurt, my calves were tight, etc. And on Monday I wore the same jeans I wore on Saturday and they were noticeably looser. Just from walking so much in 3 days! Despite the several liters of Czech beer, hah!

All in all, I had a good time in Prague, and it was whetted my appetite to see more of Central and Eastern Europe.

jet-setting

I am off to Prague this weekend! As my friend J said "That's life on the Continent. Paris one day, Prague the next".
Whoo hoo!

Stay off the roads

I am going to have to get a French driver's license. "Why Sarah," you ask, "can’t you get an international license, or won’t your US license transfer over?” Why no, I say. I could get an international license, or even just drive with my US license, but it is only valid for a year after entering France. Some states in the US have reciprocity agreements with France (and all EU countries do), but unfortunately, NY is not one of them.

Sure, I don’t own a car, and don’t plan to while I’m here. But, I may want to rent a car at some point, and you never know if you’re going to find yourself in some situation where you have to drive. It would be just stupid to let my legal blessing to drive expire.

So, I’m going to have to go to driving school. Pay almost 1,000 euros. Learn all the French road rules. Take la code, the French written exam. Fun fun. Oh wait. That’s not all. Here’s the real fun part.

The driving exam has to be done on a car with manual transmission.

And I don’t know how to drive a manual transmission.

To the great delight of my French and UK co-workers, they find this just hilarious. Apparently in Europe (and maybe the rest of the non-US world), most cars are manual, automatics are much more rare. “And so easy! You’re barely even driving!” they say.

I’m sure my Dad is groaning as he reads this, remembering my pathetic attempts to learn how to drive a stick shift in the SAU parking lot.

Well, I’m looking on the bright side of things. I will finally learn how to drive a stick shift. The 20+ hours of driving instruction will not just be a boring repetition of what I already know. My vocabulary of cars will definitely improve.

But if you go to Paris in the coming months, and see a car with the words “auto-ecole” on it, weaving down the street, or perhaps stuck in the middle of an intersection trying to shift gears, blocking all traffic, er, you might want to stay out of the way.